Enabling Effortless Mobile ID Scanning for Intellicheck Customers

Intro

Intellicheck’s mandate is to verify anyone, anywhere, at any time – and to make it so effortless that consumers barely notice. Every year, Intellicheck validates over 100 million identities worldwide. Intellicheck’s customers are banks, fintech, retail, e-commerce or government agencies who need to comply with Know Your Customer anti-fraud legislation. The company’s ID Verification API is designed to integrate with customer account opening and account recovery solutions. The typical end user is a consumer at home or in their car, who needs to open an account on the fly using their mobile phone. The objective is to make the digital verification process as seamless as possible to encourage completions and ensure new customers have a positive onboarding experience.

Challenge

Intellicheck has used traditional handheld scanners for many years but needed to develop a digital authorization process as part of their growth strategy. The Intellicheck ID validation process is straight forward. During onboarding, consumers will typically receive a text message with a link to a web page which kicks off the validation process. Then they go through a few simple steps to snap a clear picture of both sides of the ID, scan the barcode on the reverse and take a selfie.

Intellicheck’s Identity Platform™ then runs a series of sophisticated checks, using machine learning, to ensure that the document is live and unedited, and that the selfie is a live person. (Algorithms will detect if it’s a printed image, has a layer taped over the image, is a screen play or an injection attack – all common ways of bypassing validation checks.) It then runs a series of complex checks to confirm that the ID is valid and belongs to that person. Once the ID is validated, a confirmation is sent to the bank or e-commerce vendor and the account opening process can proceed.

However, consumers are using a wide range of phones with varying camera quality, are generally at home or in their cars with difficult lighting conditions and will often take photos from an awkward angle. Consumers are also notoriously impatient and fickle. If the process is slow or confusing, they will bail and switch to another vendor.

Intellicheck needed a solution that would quickly detect the borders of the ID card and auto-capture a high-quality image. The barcode reader needed to be fast and highly accurate regardless of lighting conditions and camera quality. Ease of use was key.

Dynamsoft ID capture is shockingly fast. We’ve cut the validation process from 5 minutes down to less than 2 minutes with much higher completion rates."

– Jonathan Robins, Chief Technology Officer, Intellicheck

Solution

The development team had experience with other barcode readers and had already built various prototypes but had encountered issues with every option. Dynamsoft Barcode Reader worked immediately and proved to be exceptionally fast and accurate. (It was so fast that the UI team had to add pauses to reassure users that the ID had been read and they could move to the next step!)

For image capture, Dynamsoft Document Normalizer was able to quickly identify the borders of the ID card, correct perspective, crop and produce a clear image, eliminating the need for user instructions on camera positioning.

Having selected the Dynamsoft SDKs implementation was swift. Sample code accelerated the process. Integrating the Dynamsoft libraries was rapid. Most of the development work was ensuring the Intellicheck user workflow was as intuitive and effortless as possible.

Digital online account opening is the fastest growth segment and is critical to future success. Many retail banks opt for check scanners to scan IDs at their retail locations. In this case, they send images directly to Intellicheck and the barcode is read by Dynamsoft Barcode Reader Server Edition on Intellicheck’s Python servers.

Some vendors, such as social media companies, use Intellicheck predominantly for the account recovery process. Users who have lost their email address or password will go through a similar workflow to prove their identity and recover their logins. With growing misinformation and the frequency of bots taking over user accounts, there is pressure from the US government to add safeguards. Social media companies are taking pre-emptive action. They will send ID images to Intellicheck to validate before reinstating the account.

Intellicheck’s business has traditionally been banks and retailers, but many new sectors are opening. Online gambling is a fast-growing industry that needs a lot of ID verification. Other more surprising areas include recruitment, real estate title companies, vacation rentals and even car dealerships (all areas where identity fraud is rife). For these new growth areas, online verification is crucial.

Dynamsoft Document Normalizer was perfect for finding ID card edges and quickly capturing a clean image."

– Jonathan Robins, Chief Technology Officer, Intellicheck

Impact

Previously, the user workflow involved 13 screens and was very slow and overwhelming for consumers. Users had to hold their phones horizontally and hold still while pressing a button. Many failed to complete the process, even after multiple attempts, and contacted the help center with their frustrations. Since the verification process is often the first touchpoint with a bank or retail brand, it leaves a lasting impression and is critical to get right.

Now, the process has been cut down to 5 screens and less than 2 minutes (for the complete capture and behind the scenes verification process). The process is now friction-free and has far higher completion rates.

Roughly 5,000 users a day are now doing fast, painless ID checks through their mobile phones using the Dynamsoft capture SDKs. That number is growing every day as more vendors move to digital online verification.